As organizations have transitioned to agile projects and programs, what happens to the managers? Do we need managers any more? If so, what good would they do? Yes, we need managers. And in a truly agile organization, where the managers are freed from the day-to-day tactical project tasks, we need them more than ever as […]
The December Harvard Business Review has an article, Is the Rookie Ready? (You have to subscribe and pay to read the whole thing.) The story is this: Kristen is the new project manager, reporting to Tim. The old PM left because Tim, who’d been her manager for 6 months didn’t know how to work with
If you are anything like me, you have a to-do list a mile long. Because I work for myself, I have an integrated list of everything I need to do: projects for clients, books to write, articles to write, columns to write, presents to buy, house maintenance, clothes to organize, office cleanup. The list is
I originally wanted to write about how to start an agile project, possibly the pilot agile project in your organization—if it was starved of resources, people, machines, space, whatever. But I can’t write that article because no advice is worth the space. You shouldn’t even start that project. An important tenet of agile project management
A new article is up, Using the Project Portfolio to Move to Incremental Project Funding. It’s up on PMBoulevard.com. (Free registration required). Enjoy!
If you’ve started to use agile approaches to your projects, you’ve reaped the benefits of seeing completed work, reduced work in progress, and making project risks more transparent earlier. But there’s another benefit of moving to delivering work in smaller chunks: incremental funding for projects. Few organizations have embraced the idea of incremental funding. It’s
Rothman Consulting Group, Inc. Pragmatic Manager, Vol. 6#3, You Can’t Do All the Work. Now What? October 21 , 2009 In This Issue: You Can’t Do All the Work. Now What? Manage Your Project Portfolio Only 6 Spots Left at AYE You Can’t Do All the Work. Now What? In the last Pragmatic Manager newsletter,
I have an article up on PM Boulevard: Choosing the Strategically Important Work. Enjoy! (I think you need to register for this site too. Free.)
Project portfolio management is how we choose the strategically important work—the work that provides the most business value to the organization now. There are two pieces to project portfolio management then: how to choose the work, and for how long. Many organizations struggle to use ROI (Return on Investment). You can try to use ROI.
I recently wrote an article on how to say, No: Such a Difficult Word, and a twitter follower wanted to know what to do when your manager can’t hear no. First, understand why your manager can’t hear no. Is it because the business pressures are so great that the cost of saying no seems insurmountable?